Economics

Germany and Papademos have ended Greece’s political sovereignty, but Greece gave up its economic sovereignty long ago when it adopted the euro. Two aspects of national economic sovereignty were inherently lost with nations that gave up…

I caught this comment by Scott Fulwiler on a blog post a 3spoken: the notion that firms can spend and reduce net saving in order to increase net saving of the household sector--while theoretically true and true in an accounting…

We (also) do not want black helicopters flying around dropping bags of cash; and we (also) oppose government “pump-priming” demand stimulus—the libertarians and Austrians and even Milton Friedman are correct in their argument that this…

Consider the statements by the UK leadership that the UK has "run out of money." Does anyone think that the UK financial leaders believe that statement? If Germany declared war on the UK tomorrow would the UK surrender because it had "run…

Clearly, economic policy is now far more complex than it appeared to be before the GFC. As we enter this Age of Deleveraging, the worst thing we can do is apply policies that appeared to work during the preceding Age of Leverage—but were in…

In conclusion, while there are links between the “twin deficits”, they are not the links usually imagined. US trade and budget deficits are linked, but they do not put the US in an unsustainable position vis a vis the Chinese. If the…

I would bet on near-systemic collapse before the Fed starts either asset purchases or Congress resorts to fiscal activism. But eventually, the Fed is going to purchase more than just treasuries. They will purchase a lot of financial assets…

Last week we examined Milton Friedman’s version of Functional Finance, which we found to be remarkably similar to Abba Lerner’s. The only problem with Friedman’s analysis is that he did not account for the external sector: he wanted a…

Milton Friedman's 1948 article, "A Monetary and Fiscal Framework for Economic Stability" put forward a proposal according to which the government would run a balanced budget only at full employment, with deficits in recession and surpluses…

Pavlina Tcherneva argues that the job guarantee is not just an afterthought to MMT but a crucial component that has so far offered the most coherent counter-cyclical economic stabilizing mechanism.